School for the FAS Student

You may be dreading it. School is starting and you have a son or daughter with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). Getting them the services they need often involves an uphill battle and and Individualized Education Plan (IEP – Special Ed). Hopefully, a regular high school diploma and not an IEP diploma will be earned, since the two are not the same.

But before there’s diploma talk, there has to be classroom talk. And how to manage learning disabilities.

How do we get a brain-damaged kid to concentrate? Usually, they have attention difficulties ranging from ADHD to simply spacing-out every other minute. Kind of hard to focus.

The social skills are often shot. They hang with the wrong crowd, or believe everything that’s told to them. The student often can’t pick up on the simplest of social cues such as reading another’s facial expressions. That’s rough when surrounded by peers in a school setting.

Which leads to cause and effect thinking, or the lack thereof. They don’t get “If A, then B”.

An FAS student often possesses extreme memory problems. However, not every day. The information learned this morning may be gone by tomorrow. If not this afternoon. It’s what’s referred to as the Swiss Cheese Brain, full of holes where information seeps out. Sort of difficult to do school like this.

Some have reading and writing disabilities. Maybe the comprehension or speed is not there. Might be motor skill or math problems. There are so many possible scenarios.

So schedule that IEP, or meet with your child’s teacher at the very least. Get your ducks in order. With a little planning, and lots of follow-through, it’s going to be a great school year!